Frogs and ships (daily action planning content)
What do frogs and ships have in common with each other (besides water)? Well, they’re both part of daily action components of The Manifest Method, a goal-setting and goal-achieving strategy developed by Angela Jia Kim of Savor the Success. And they are the two components that I’ve found most helpful in creating a detailed, attainable (not to mention successful) to-do list!
First, let’s talk frog. You may be familiar with the “frog” concept from Bryan Tracy’s Eat That Frog! “Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worse thing that is going to happen to you all day long. Your “frog” is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it.”
Each morning, be sure to write down up to three “frogs”, or things that you know are the most important tasks for you to achieve for the day, despite if you want to do them or not. Try to make that one of the first things you get accomplished each day. If you “eat that frog” at the beginning of your day, the rest of your day will be much more enjoyable (and usually more productive) knowing that you’ve already accomplished your big task (and that you don’t have to dread or stress about it anymore!). Some days you may only have one frog, some days you may have more—try not to write down more than three per day or it can become overwhelming.
Now that you’ve eaten your frog (tastes like chicken, after you get used to it!), you should also determine your three ships for the day. The concept of three ships came from Chellie Campbell’s The Wealthy Spirit. In the past, ships would be sent out, and people would then wait for something to come back to them. Some ships would suffer shipwreck and would never come back, but others would come back with food, goods, or even gold. The point is that if you don’t send out ships, nothing new will come back to you. And the more often you send out a ship, the more chances you have of them returning!
So, keep this idea of ships in mind when working on your business, and when writing your daily to-do plan. Try to jot down at least one ship per day (aim for three when you can). A ship could be a business proposal, a self promotional item, an introductory email, a sales call…but remember that if you send out a lot of different ships, something is bound to eventually come back to you. It is important to send out ships daily, and it’s important to make a note on your daily list of which ships you send out and when (how else will you know which ones came back!?). The ship you send out today may come back to you in a week, or it may come back to you in a year. But, continue to send, and then wait patiently, because something will eventually come back to you!
Have you eaten any frogs today? What are your three ships? We’d love to hear back from you!
